Drexel History 101: How Well Do You Know Drexel University?
Sure, you know Drexel University — but do you really?
Here’s a fun “back-to-school” quiz to see if you know some fun facts about Drexel history and culture.
Answers will be revealed at the bottom of the quiz.
1. Before we were the “Drexel Dragons,” what were we called?
a. Drexel Scholars
b. Drexel Engineers
c. Drexel Industrialists
2. Before blue and gold, what were Drexel’s official colors?
a. Orange and silver
b. Blue and orange
c. Blue and silver
3. Who is “Mario” the dragon mascot named for?
a. The University’s founder
b. An alumnus who never missed a basketball game in 20 years
c. Drexel’s first president
4. Which is NOT a standout feature of Drexel’s University City Campus?
a. A building designed by the firm of famed architect I.M. Pei, who used similar concepts for the renowned glass pyramid outside of the Louvre Museum in Paris
b. Philadelphia’s largest telescope, located on the roof of a building
c. A Dragon statue that incorporates steam from the SEPTA subway system below to blow out smoke at short, random intervals
5. True or false: Drexel was the first college or university in the country to require students to have their own personal computers.
a. True
b. False
6. Which was NOT invented by Drexel alumni?
a. Post-it note
b. Green bean casserole
c. Barcode
7. Drexel has one of the oldest cooperative education (“co-op”) programs in the country. When was it started?
a. 1919
b. 1892
c. 1936
8. You’ve probably seen the famous “Mario the Magnificent” statue on 33rd and Market streets. According to its sculptor, Eric Berg, how many scales are on the statue, which stands at 10 feet high, 14 feet long and 4,100 pounds?
a. 1 million
b. 6 million
c. 13 million
9. True or false: Drexel has a football team.
a. True
b. False
10. Which Disney movie is about the family of Drexel University’s founder?
a. “Flubber”
b. “The Shaggy Dog”
c. “The Happiest Millionaire”
Answers
1. Before we were the “Drexel Dragons,” what were we called?
Correct answer: B. Engineers. Yes, really! What’s more: no one knows why we became “Dragons.” The name change happened in 1928; as noted by The Triangle, Drexel’s student newspaper, in a 1928 article: “Due to the fact that both the Engineering and Business Administration Schools are being represented on the various athletic teams of Drexel, it has been decided to call or nickname these teams, ‘The Dragons.’”
2. Before blue and gold, what were Drexel’s official colors?
Correct answer: A. Orange and silver. It’s unknown when or why orange and silver were originally chosen, but the colors were changed in the 1920s to be blue and gold. FYI: If you want to be specific, the official colors are Pantone 294C (blue) and Pantone 7548C (yellow).
3. Who is “Mario” the dragon mascot named for?
Correct answer: B. An alumnus who never missed a basketball game in 20 years. The honor goes to Mario V. Mascioli ’45. The Dragon has only been “Mario,” or “Mario the Magnificent,” since 1997, when that year’s graduating class gifted the University a new dragon mascot with a new name. Mascioli never missed a men’s basketball game for more than 20 years while he was on Drexel’s board of trustees, a member of the Drexel 100 and chairman and governor emeritus on the board of governors of the Drexel Alumni Association.
4. Which is NOT a standout feature of Drexel’s University City Campus?
Correct answer: C. A Dragon statue that incorporates steam from the SEPTA subway system below to blow out smoke at short, random intervals. The building designed by I.M. Pei’s architecture firm is the Bossone Research Enterprise Center. The city’s largest telescope is located in the Joseph R. Lynch Observatory on the roof of Curtis Hall. As for the steam coming out of the dragon statue: the sculptor Eric Berg noted in a Q&A that “the ‘steam’ concept was really a pipe dream, but at the [statue’s] actual dedication a hose was rigged from the sidewalk steam outlet to the Dragon's mouth.”
5. True or false: Drexel was the first college or school in the country to require students to have their own personal computers.
Correct answer: A. True. Drexel was the first member of the Apple University Consortium and made personal microcomputer access mandatory for every newly enrolled first year student in 1984. Students purchased their own Macintosh 128K that, through a special partnership with Apple, featured a blue “D” for Drexel, weighed 20 pounds and cost $1,000, plus tax (retail price was $2,495). The 40th anniversary of that special milestone will be celebrated next year, but you can read about “When the Mac Came to Market Street” beforehand.
6. Which was NOT invented by Drexel alumni?
Correct answer: A. Post-it note. A famous Thanksgiving side dish, the green bean casserole, was invented by Drexel alumna Dorcas Reilly, BA home economics ’47, in 1955 while working in a test kitchen for Campbell’s Soup Co. The barcode system was invented by Norman Joseph Woodland, mechanical engineering ’47, and Bernard Silver, BS electrical engineering ’47, who were continuing post-graduate studies at the school in 1948 when the head of a local grocery store chain asked a Drexel dean to develop a way to read product data during the checkout process. That’s why Drexel is known as “the birthplace of the barcode,” which Woodland and Silver patented in 1952.
7. Drexel has one of the oldest cooperative education (“co-op”) programs in the country. When was it started?
Correct answer: A. 1919. The University’s involvement in the war effort during World War I heavily influenced the decision of then-Drexel president Hollis Godfrey to start the program in 1919. You can learn more about how Drexel’s co-op program was made and look back on the first 100 years of co-op. Bonus: 1892 was the year that Drexel (as the then-Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry) opened, and 1936 was the year in which its name was changed to the Drexel Institute of Technology (which changed its name in 1970 to today’s Drexel University).
8. You’ve probably seen the famous “Mario the Magnificent” statue on 33rd and Market streets. According to its sculptor, Eric Berg, how many scales are on the statue, which stands at 10 feet high, 14 feet long and 4,100 pounds?
Correct answer: C. 13 million. “There are 13 million scales that graduate in size from being larger and wider on the body to narrower and smaller for the feet and down the legs. Each scale was carved in relief so that it would look like a scale,” said the artist in this Q&A about how and why the statue was made.
9. True or false: Drexel has a football team.
Correct answer: A. True. This is true, but probably not in the way you thought! While the University closed its athletic football team in 1973, the Drexel Football Team — a student-run improv comedy group — has been “undefeated since 2005,” as its DragonLink bio states.
10. Which Disney movie is about the family of Drexel University’s founder, Anthony J. Drexel?
Correct answer: C. “The Happiest Millionaire.” The 1967 musical comedy’s titular character is the founder’s grandson, Col. Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Sr., and the film was adapted from a 1955 book written by his daughter (the founder’s great-granddaughter) that was first adapted into a 1956 Broadway play. This was the last movie that Walt Disney personally worked on and unlike “Flubber” and “The Shaggy Dog,” it has not been remade (yet). You can read more about the forgotten Drexel/Disney movie in this story.